Paul MacNeill

It’s a sad irony that appears lost on Currie. How can we afford the building but not the drugs?

Second Opinion by Paul MacNeill, Eastern Graphic

If there is one star in the Ghiz cabinet it is Health Minister Doug Currie. For the most part he has managed to fly under the radar of public scrutiny despite health easily being the largest spender in government at 30 per cent of the total provincial budget.

Many credit Currie’s former career as a hockey coach for his success. He drafts a game plan and then sticks to it ferociously. His understated style has worked.

But just as in hockey, sometimes the star politician can stumble.    Last week Doug Currie stumbled. Hard.

It started with Currie trying to explain away why PEI is now the only province in the country that does not fund Avastin, a drug used in the treatment of colorectal cancer. The drug is expensive. It’s estimated annual cost is $600,000. But that is a pittance compared to the millions, likely close to $20 million, poured into bricks, mortar and machines for the PEI Cancer Treatment Unit.

It’s a sad irony that appears lost on Currie. How can we afford the building but not the drugs?

It’s shameful that PEI now stands alone in Canada in not paying for Avastin. People will die because of government’s misplaced budgetary priorities.

Those misplaced priorities were on display again at the provincial legislature when Currie mishandled a request for $30,000 – less than the cost of a car for a cabinet minister or deputy minister – to fund operations of the Alzheimer’s Society.

The legislative gallery was filled with society supporters but when asked specifically about funding he dodged, evaded and did everything he could to not answer the question. Currie looked like a politician trying to deliver a fast answer rather than an honest answer.

But for Doug Currie it only got worse with his plan to create the so-called arms length Health PEI. Just because a politician calls a body arms length does not make it so.

Doug Currie will appoint the CEO.

Doug Currie will appoint the unelected, unaccountable board chairman.

Doug Currie will appoint the unelected, unaccountable board.

Oh and don’t forget, Doug Currie gets a veto on all major decisions made by the so-called arms length Health PEI.

Don’t be fooled by this minister’s rhetoric.

By his own admission Health PEI will not save money nor will it reduce the size of the health care bureaucracy. So what’s the point?

Doug Currie is creating a puppet of the minister of health; a body that will do his bidding and take the political heat when tough decisions, like hospital closures or privatization, need to be made.

He is creating an organization to appoint Liberal has-beens to patronage positions in the footsteps of the likes of Hector MacLeod, Nancy Guptill, Alan Rankin, John Broderick and Brooke MacMillan who have all been handed soft patronage landings by the Ghiz government.

It’s worth noting that the honorariums for the Health PEI board could fund the Alzheimer’s Society several times over.

And the cherry on top of Currie’s less than stellar week was the press release issued promoting Health PEI. In it the Department of Health makes a flagrantly dishonest statement about its investment in home care.

The Corpus Sanchez Report, from which the idea of Health PEI flows, recommended last year an immediate infusion of $2 million in home care funding followed by $4 million to $8 million by 2010 – just to bring PEI up the national level.

The Ghiz government only found $1.5 million – 25 per cent less than the absolute minimum. It added $800,000 in the spring budget, which it didn’t even mention in its press release because it is so dismally short of what the report called for. The minister knows his puny investment means PEI is still lagging far behind in home care funding, one of the few areas where an investment will result in a direct payback to taxpayers.

No minister of the crown has the right to mislead Islanders. That’s what Currie’s press release did.

It was a bad week for Doug Currie. But it was a worse week for Islanders because we will all pay for his foibles.

Paul MacNeill is Publisher of Island Press Limited. He can be contacted at paul@peicanada.com